Exactly How Poorly Is Live Music Doing in 2010?

Fairly poor! Grumblings over slumping concert-ticket sales have been hard to miss recently, but Pollstar has now crunched the numbers for the first half of 2010. Here we go: At $965.5 million, gross revenues for the top 100 tours in North America are down 17 percent from the same period last year; at 15.9 million, the total number of tickets sold is down roughly 12 percent (both figures are five-year lows. Man, no one went to see shows in 2005). Not everyone is affected: Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Muse, Taylor Swift, George Strait, Black Eyed Peas, John Mayer, and Tim McGraw are all sitting pretty this year. Rihanna, the Jonas Brothers, Lilith, and “American Idols Live!” — all of whom have had to cancel dates on their tours — not as much. So, aspiring musicians who had accepted the fact that they'd never make a cent off record sales and would instead need to be on the road two-thirds of the year in order to make a living ... maybe it's time to give law school another look? [NYT]

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